


Afterglow

by The_Otter_Knight



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Apple of Eden, Brief mention of Altair, Community: asscreedkinkmeme, Implied Relationships, M/M, No spoilers for AC: Origins, Prompt Fill, reposted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 07:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Otter_Knight/pseuds/The_Otter_Knight
Summary: Leonardo finds more in the Apple than just knowledge and secrets. He finds a man.





	Afterglow

**Author's Note:**

> Also written last year. One of my favourites. Unbeta'd and unedited.
> 
> **Prompt:**  
I adore Bayek. I also couldn't help but think how well these two could mesh. Would love to read anything on this (ultra rare?) ship. Bonus points for Aya being her amazing self 'cause I love her too.

Leonardo didn't appreciate how juvenile it all felt.  
  
He loathed how the secret left an impression of guilt in his mouth, tar and cinders and smoke when he had not burned anything recently nor done anything, well, considerably indecent. How it curled and bubbled and broiled beneath his skin, something unique and sharp beneath his very creases. He really didn’t appreciate how voyeuristic it felt, how he aspired to be caught to some extent if only to share his bewildered joy, but every other factor in the equation weighed it all down. The consequences of Ezio finding out he had kept it a secret for so long, then the fact that a part of him yet wanted it to be _kept_ a secret were unwitting factors.  
  
It felt a bit like cheating and he’d like to think he wasn’t the sort. Leonardo was well aware that he has hardly had a companion since Ezio had strutted into his workshop. While his friend was dashing in his own rights, their friendships had yet to turn. If it would at all. Instead, he sacrificed sins of the flesh for those of the mind. It was more than an equal trade, and those ... Apples of Ezio’s were worlds inside themselves.  
  
Each time Leonardo grasped one, thoughts and notions and visions of building were structured within his sight. Motorized wagons and contraptions that could make humans fly and vessels that would allow them to plummets through the depths of the oceans. He could name them all and map their blueprints with shaky fingertips if he truly aspired, but it was all hazy without constant contact. His perception of time had long since become skewered since his first usage of the Apple.  
  
His consciousness could expand across the entirety of the globe and he could glimpse into dark corridors and tombs where the other Pieces were kept. Once, he was met with the awareness of being glimpsed _into_. The paranoia and frenzied irritability that ensued from that was enough for him to reconsider doing that again. It was an ordeal, though, to have felt infinity through his veins and phantom aches of migraines as they bloomed inside his skull with reachable knowledge and then have to settle back into his body made of flesh and blood.  
  
There were other consequences, too. The Apple spoke in concepts and ideas without the sharp vowels of any language spoken. They were easy to decipher when the meaning was presented so clearly and profoundly to him. There was even a slow drawl of humanity etched into a corner of this Apple, something that reminded him of sharp-angled cursive and sharp vowels and something so distinctly human. That area was easier to decipher, to become tangible as someone’s verbal journal. The still-frames -- not paintings but memories frozen -- etched in that corner were of Masyaf, of Assassins and blades and of loss. There had been a temple that felt colossal as the journalist described it. The the weight of what transpired had there that made it so. It marred his thoughts and a few times he awoke with a language not of his own on his tongue.  
  
The true reason why he had felt this way, plagued with guilt as he was, was because of the figure who lingered there at the corner of his sight. He had been an apparition before, brought forth by the Apple, at the edges of his eyes. His surprise lingered, especially so when his features seemed particularly human. He hadn't seemed alive, more shapes and whispers than man at first. With time, however, the stranger became more apparent and corporeal, nothing like those godly sights he would see on occasion when he stayed in the Apple.  
  
He was a hulking figure with scars that marred his arms more than genuine flesh did. He was taller, darker, and would have been a great deal imposing if he didn’t tower by each individual window that Leonardo had every time Leonardo spotted him. His gaze hooded, he stared out into the busy streets of the Italian city with disinterest - both in the people and in Leonardo himself. He hadn’t dared acknowledge Leonardo in the slightest and dissipated at the slightest motion of approach.  
  
He was about as bulky as one of the guards were with toned muscles and well worn features. His knuckles were bruised but his smile, when it would later grow apparent later, was amiable. There’s a distinct hum to his skin, of electric currents as they pulsed beneath him. Even at first glance, the knowledge of his otherworldliness had not escaped Leonardo. To even make a guess that he was a live person who had just wandered in had been laughable. Although, never once had the Apple told him he was a danger.  
  
When the Italian didn’t work on his inventions he attempted to figure out the mystery of the man. Of the finely woven cloth that draped across him and the way he stood. The pained way his shoulders arched when he pondered for too long, the sort of way he recognized from Ezio’s posture again and again when he thought Leonardo hadn’t looked. With time he seemed to gain more interest in the livelihood outside but only with the vague sort of curiosity that someone would when they had nowhere else to go.  
  
Gradually, the stranger turned to watch him and the way that Leonardo spread the cloth around his boards to make a canvas or the way his ink dotted along his pages. It was strange, to have someone hover nearby and to watch him work. It wasn’t with the air of someone knowledgeable or even with the artistic flair of someone who had a genuine taste for the arts. Or, in Ezio’s case, to wait for him to reach an acceptable point to break into his concentration. There seemed to be no reason as to his watching, just a bland sort of detachment.  
  
They never spoke, at first, and in the end he couldn’t decipher how long it had been since the man first stood in in his one-story workshop, but with unmarked time the other began to wander closer. There wasn’t an unfriendly nature to him, not that he could tell anyhow, and he only ever approached as close as the end of the table. Where Ezio fell asleep to his quiet tinkering, the apparition only watched silently.  
  
Eventually, they speak, or some skewed form of it. The words were soft-lilted, even though his tone was a little more like charcoal and dust. They were not the sharp, angular vowels and passive fervour of the speaker in the Apple - not that he would have made that assumption in the first place. It had been no language that Leonardo knew and none that Ezio had known - he had made an attempt to fumble through a couple words that only resulted in a baffled look. There was something distinctly predatory about him, militaristic and orderly, even with the lack of weapons on his person. Just as the author in the Apple was pegged easily as a Masyaf Assassin, he was figured to be something similar. Was it a rite of passage to go through such suffering? All three Assassins that he knew bore the lines of loss in their face, in their words or gestures.  
  
It was strange to start caring for him - this man in the hood. Unexpectedly, Leonardo had readily begun to angle his body as he worked for a more comfortable view for the stranger. It was no strain on his part, just a subconscious effort. One that seemed to have an amenable reaction. It also allowed for Leonardo to get a better consideration of the foreigner. The man could loiter by the window, lean against the pane and engage in other recreational activities. He seemed to lack the desire to eat, drink, or use any hygienic facilities. He held a certain edge of respect in his gaze when it lingered on Leonardo, of which his dark eyes held an intelligence that intrigued him more often than not.  
  
Leonardo was not embarrassed to admit that he had kept a journal of things he would notice; the texture of the fabric the non-native seemed to bear, or the intricate designs of his leatherwork. The blemished skin along his fingers and the flat expanse of his palm spoke of a hunting bird of some sort, or perhaps the very pigeons that Ezio worked with. The disposition that spoke of no ill intent but peaceful tranquility. Interesting, he was never there when Leonardo fished out the Apple to peer into it. There was a solemnity inside the artist that foretold it would not bode well if he were to be seen with it. How unfortunate the lives were of those who were sacrificed for the possession of a lone Apple. It was sorrowful how universal it was.  
  
The man would scratch at his shaggy jawline and refused to sit at the stool and instead sprawled across the floor, tucked neatly into the corner. He would muse aloud in that unusual language of his and Leonardo would respond, not with the knowledge of what was said but with the companiable ease that surprisingly came easy. Perhaps it had been the Apple that had deceived him so, made him so docile towards this strange presence in his room and a tolerance for his mannerisms. Not that there was anything wrong with what he did. He mostly loomed there.  
  
He was easy to fill notebooks of. His brooding face; the laugh lines that creased his mouth. The relaxed way he sat, hands lax. The way he stood at the window and the way he leaned over Leonardo's worktable. These bound books are shuffled and put away, proof of his insanity or the existence of transcendence through the Apple. Leonardo has never once considered to tell Ezio of this potential ancestral Assassin here, though. There was something selfish in him, something that wanted to keep the foreigner a secret. There was also the simple fact that it could have been his lunacy that had taken form and he'd rather not assure Ezio of that fact.  
  
His name was finally spoken by candle light - but perhaps it hadn’t been a name at all. A title, a shadow, a glimpse of the person he once was. If he had came from the Apple, was he truly a man anymore? He responded to Bayek though, the stilted way it fell from Leonardo’s lips the first couple times, haphazard and jumbled. It was familiar sounds and gestures that broached the thread of familiarity, that seemed to solidify the reality. Bayek spoke and gestured and with the days that passed understood the names of the paintbrushes and paints that Leonardo commomly used.  
  
Like, Leonardo in turn learned another word for his rug and bed and his window, for his house and friend. They still could not hold a conversation but it was _something._ This experience felt like a repainted canvas. The more he learned from and of Bayek the more the white paint spread. The more he yearned to restretch the cloth and imagine the lines that creased the work before he had smudged it so.  
  
Bayek eventually spoke of his home. Or what Leonardo had surmised to be so - the familiar ache to his words, the now echoed look on his face. He spoke of Aya and Khemu, names that he was only sure of because of the frequency. He only spoke of it when Leonardo was visibly distressed about how things progressed. When he spent nights plunged into the Apple. When he emerged each time afterwards less intact than he had been before. On some nights, Bayek was there in his room, a presence that couldn’t be shed, a shadow by the wall. Bayek’s hands would trace patterns of comfort onto his skin, sigils and hieroglyphs that started to make more sense with each bolt of knowledge pressed into his brain.  
  
Bayek has become a fixture in Leonardo’s life, a constant that has replaced even his paintings. He was what Leonardo used as the compass of his sanity now, especially when the walls were etched in blood of runes common to the anarchy of the inner Apple. Of glimpses into futures that did not yet exist, of currents of time that pulsate through and around him, disconnected.  
  
Leonardo threw himself into his work, scribbled and scratched until the echoes of what transpired through his sleep and beyond faded gently. Bayek stood at his shoulder now, observant but not invasive. He watched and tangled himself so messily into Leonardo’s life it was hard not to look for him in the crowd. Here, though, Bayek was _his_ in the purest sense of the word. His gestures, his kindness, his words as they bounced across the room. The way his calloused fingers dipped around Leonardo’s wrist, how the lines of his ink spread and the fragility of their friendship thinned.  
  
Bayek was warm and just, and it was not hard to admire his physique, his sharp mind and jagged glass laugh. His attentiveness and quiet nature, the one who talked to fill the void of loneliness but never the quiet in which their friendship stood. Bayek’s features would twist into something indecipherable from time to time, curious but patient. It was directed towards Leonardo’s work but more commonly him. It would be easy to trick himself into belief, or to consider the opposite. The Piece of Eden would surely tell him the fact if he just asked but Leonardo has always preferred hands on experience and experiments rather than a blunt truth. Whatever that look meant, he had hoped it was a mirror of the one Leonardo sent him.  
  
It was almost doleful how easy it was to consider that line of friendship. To judge the brushstrokes in which it was painted. However, the wider his canvas of reality was stretched and painted over the more he wondered if _this_ line, too, could be painted over. He was an artist, after all, and inventor second. He could create his own chances.  
  
However, the bluntness of truth would blunder in. The facts written in books usually had some basis, after all. Would Bayek only reciprocate because he was a figment brought forth by the Apple? A shadow deceitful and accursed as the serpent who dripped lies? Leonardo was admittedly used to physical companions but Bayek had been a friend first. He hadn’t wanted to take advantage of him, not in the way that was acceptable anyhow. Had he wrenched Bayek forth from his timeline? Tore him so easily and selfishly from Khemu and Aya? Was he merely a shadow of a person who once interacted with the Apple, an imprint seized? Would he thus defile the real Bayek’s memory? Was Bayek even real, or a conversion of all the conscious thought that entered the Apple into a single entity? Was he true, real and long past his death? Where did he go everytime he left?

Leonardo has always been defined by his curiosity and the more he thought he knew the more barren his mind felt. The Apple assured him of that. The more he could use the Apple, the clearer the implications behind Bayek’s words. Those questions of earlier still burned his mind and every time he awoke in a sweat and Bayek was there he felt ashamed. Not of the fact that he doubted the genuinity of Bayek but the hard consideration that he might have done anything to find out the truth. That his curiosity burned all the brighter when Bayek spoke, of his home and his people, words that he cannot pronounce without a fumble but could in time. He felt ashamed to admit that if perhaps Bayek could slip through time, perhaps he could as well.  
  
Leonardo wondered if Bayek had his own doubts, if that was why he was so reluctant to speak with him at first. Although that would then have raised the implication that they were both fabrications of that otherworldly power.. Had Bayek simply found his company agreeable only because Leonardo was all that was left for him? The only soul who had reached into the Apple, trapped in the void that was, only to be released every time someone chanced in? Bayek did not speak with Ezio just as Ezio did not acknowledge him. Other times Bayek would dissipate, gone so easily and silently that it almost frightened him. The truth was that the idea of losing Bayek was unfathomable had him frightened as well.  
  
Bayek would stand at his side diligently nonetheless. Their shoulders would brush and Leonardo would thank that his concentration was profound lest he slipped up. Not that his concentration was so easily deterred but perhaps because he would have gladly bestowed his focus devotedly to Bayek in all his entirety. There was a rumble of a laugh, nothing unkind nor foul but sincere and profound. Bayek’s bracer caught Leonardo’s shirt sleeve but then he let the other lace his fingers atop his and guide it to form a different crease on the page. The ink bled just a bit and what Bayek seemed to consider for the design would have allowed more freedom in movement.  
  
The quill raised then settled on the side. Leonardo knew that the lines would become presentable as his own the next day or even the next glance, as if Bayek’s influence would simply cease to exist. Bayek did not move away. He was tersely aware of this, of the way his hand lingered. It dropped just as his pulse declined into something of a normal rate. Those fingers reached up and grazed across his temple, at the blond hair that spilled there. The path he traced might have been something to represent good luck or fortune or even damnation. Then Bayek shifted. He leaned a little bit closer and the single word was an exhale. _”Leonardo.”_ It was not the first time his name has been spoken by Bayek, not like that, but it has an effect on him all the same. His head turned and he could see the full brown of Bayek’s eyes, the strong crook of his nose and the line that creased his upper lip. Suddenly but not for the first time, Leonardo considered to ask him to model for him. Perhaps with less clothes on. However, that thought for once was followed with the realization that perhaps Bayek would agree.  
  
Leonardo’s mouth curved up slightly with melancholy.  
  
Yes, perhaps he has lost his sanity along the way. That this juggling act between curiosity and answers would undoubtedly topple on him. Perhaps certain lines on a painting must never be marked over with white, especially if the rest of it was in colour. But Leonardo has always been one to try and try again, until he was either satisfied or ashamed or just tired of it all. The concept of humanity was distorted when in correlation with something as holy as the Apple, from whence Bayek came. Leonardo has every whim of a mortal human, though, one who dipped his toes into the goblet of truth. He was a man and he could be selfish. What he coveted was Bayek, though. When it finally came to it, he could paint Bayek’s form on his easel and be assured that sometimes it was alright to feel that way.  
  
Later, Ezio would saunter in after Bayek has long since passed. Whether that meant he has gone into his own timeline or trascended or became enveloped by the Apple once more, Leonardo was unaware. His time with Bayek might not yield answers but perhaps instead only questions. Curiosity could not be tamed and the painter keeps painting. Leonardo had always invented things and his secret of Bayek was one of them. There was no shame in his secrecy anymore, just the longing of a man who enjoyed the company and wisdom and voice of someone who offered it. As well as the fact that he skulked about with it, as if he truly did fear the knowledge of it passing to anyone. Perhaps that had been the problem all along.  
  
Ezio’s gaze had lingered on Leonardo’s flesh and the teasing remarks came, but with it came the truth. Bayek, in some sense of the word, was real. Whether he was a construct of his own, a creation for him by the Apple or something else entirely - a ghost, a phantom, an idea of eternity and beyond. Ezio knew that Leonardo chose to hide something from him but he also knew that he did not need to know everything. When the young Assassin went off on a tangent about another piece of Altaïr’s Codex that he has found, Leonardo found that he smiled. Perhaps he was not the only one with a secret of his own.  
  
Later though, after Ezio has gone he stood next to the chest with the Apple and considered everything. His existence, Bayek’s, the Creed, the ancestral magic that people have fought over and died for. Did it give without sacrifice? Was that its appeal? Or has it taken something from Leonardo already? What else would it demand if he asked for this: if Bayek was real and could visit Leonardo, why could he not visit him?  
  
However, answers would come with both time and patience. Both of which Leonardo has ample of. So he set up his easel and stretched the cloth and took out his white paint. However, his brush did not dip there. Sometimes, new beginnings were not the choice to erase everything and start over. Sometimes, things began anew when they overlapped the ending of something else until it was its own creation. Leonardo has always painted and invented things - pieces of art that he has shattered his soul to put into. It has always been something he has done. It will be what he continued to do after Bayek has gone, just as he did before. For this piece, he did not invent a story - he told one. One of truths and sincerity, of guilt and shame that passed, and of men who stood in his workshop and listened to the silence. With each stroke of his brush he confirmed that the world did not need answers, only those who asked questions. Perhaps some day he would ask the right ones and perhaps someday Bayek would stay.  
  
Today, he just existed.


End file.
